1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to a disk device. More specifically, the present invention relates to a disk device having a flexible flat cable connected to an optical pickup.
2. Background Information
A conventional disk device has an optical pickup and a flexible flat cable connected to the optical pickup via a connector. A durability test of the disk device includes a durability test of 200,000 full seek operations with the disk device. For example, a plurality of (such as four) disk devices having a 45-pin flexible flat cable are readied for test use. The optical pickup of each of the disk devices is moved back and forth 200,000 times between innermost and outermost peripheries of a disk. Then, the flexible flat cable is checked for discontinuity. Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application Publication No. H11-242860 discusses related technology.
When the optical pickup is moved backward to the outermost periphery of the disk, a connected end of the flexible flat cable connected to the connector is pulled downward, so the radius of curvature of an arc-shaped bent-back portion of the connected end is smaller. Furthermore, the bent-back portion is bent relatively suddenly, so when the durability of 200,000 full seek operations is conducted, the flexible flat cable is repeatedly subjected to relatively large bending stress at the connected end between the flexible flat cable and the optical pickup. As a result, breakage occurs at the connected end, which means that the flexible flat cable has poor durability.
In view of the above, it will be apparent to those skilled in the art from this disclosure that there exists a need for an improved disk device. This invention addresses this need in the art as well as other needs, which will become apparent to those skilled in the art from this disclosure.